Migrant tide is too much, says Field

By Philip Johnston and Toby Helm

12:01AM BST 29 Jun 2006

Politicians are ''living on borrowed time'' over the unprecedented levels of immigration, a senior Labour backbencher said yesterday.

Frank Field, the former welfare reform minister and a highly respected party veteran, said present policy was ''unsustainable''. He is the most significant centre-Left figure to warn about the apparently untrammelled influx of foreign workers and their families.

Ministers say there is ''no obvious limit'' to the numbers who could come in and maintain that the economy needs migrants to function. But council chiefs said this week that services across the country were finding it difficult to cope with the sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands of people for whom financial plans had not been made.

They also questioned the basis of the Government's approach when Britain had more than seven million people described as ''economically inactive''.

Mr Field, speaking to the BBC, said Britain was in danger of becoming a "global traffic station" for migrant workers. He urged politicians on all sides to stop ignoring public concern before the issue was more effectively exploited by far-Right organisations such as the British National Party.

He also said he doubted whether the levels of immigration could be absorbed without dramatic changes to Britain's nature and culture.

"This is the most massive transformation of our population. Do we merely accept this as another form of globalisation? That it doesn't matter where you are, or that you belong to a country and have roots? That we are all just following the jobs?"

Mr Field, the MP for Birkenhead, said people who questioned mass immigration were often accused of "playing the race card" but this was "just another way of closing down debate". He added: "There will be economic gains but I am just raising whether any country can sustain the rate of immigration we are now suffering.

"If we are not careful, we will be transformed into a global traffic station and that is not what most people mean by being part of a country. It is only because the BNP are so inept that the debate has not taken off."

Mr Field said mainstream politicians had to address immigration "before the BNP stumbles on somebody with talent". He said: "We are living on borrowed time. We cannot continue on the assumption that the BNP will present leaders which turn off most voters, even if what they are saying is important.''

Since last year's general election, when the Tories promised a ceiling on immigration and Tony Blair pledged a national debate, there had been virtual silence, he said.

But Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, denounced Mr Field's comments. "There is a fine line between political candour on the sensitive issue of immigration, and downright scare-mongering. In making his remarks in this way, Frank Field failed this test and risks exacerbating precisely those public concerns he is urging us to confront."

Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of Migrationwatch, said Mr Field was "astonishingly brave" to raise the issue. "We have for too long ducked a serious debate on the scale of immigration. The Government have done their best to bury the numbers and the Conservatives seem to have lost their nerve."

Since Enoch Powell's dire warnings in the late 1960s, politicians have been reluctant to raise the immigration issue. Last month, Margaret Hodge, the industry minister, said white working-class families in her east London constituency felt so neglected by the Government and angered by immigration that they were deserting Labour and flocking to the BNP.

Britain is experiencing its biggest wave of immigration, mainly as a result of the expansion of the EU in 2004 from 15 to 25 members. The community took in eight former communist nations, plus Cyprus and Malta. Britain, Sweden and Ireland were the only three members not to exercise their right to impose limits on the number of workers who could enter in the years following enlargement.

When Powell was warning of the impact of immigration in his ''rivers of blood'' speech, annual net migration was around 70,000. Last year, it was more than 200,000.

Since Labour came to power in 1997, British citizenship has been granted to almost one million foreign nationals, easily the highest settlement rate in history. More than half were under 34.

Phil Woolas, the community cohesion minister, said: "Of course we need to debate it and listen to the point people make but we need to base a debate on the facts.

"I do not accept that this Government has not discussed race and immigration."